The invention relates generally to peripheral devices and interface cards such as PC cards and more particularly to an improved mechanical design for such cards.
Electronic devices may use various peripheral devices or interface cards to increase flexibility and adaptability to various work environments. This may be especially true for computing devices such as handheld computer terminals, laptop computers and vehicle mounted devices. Prior to development of standards for connecting peripheral devices to computers, computers often accepted only limited models and brands of peripheral devices. For example, memory cards often were designed to be plugged only into specific computer models.
A need to standardize the connection of peripheral devices to computing devices was soon recognized. Initially, the standardization of interchangeable memory cards was developed. These interchangeable memory cards were sometimes used in lieu of floppy diskettes for exchanging data or for expanding the memory of a computing device. The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was formed by several memory card manufacturers in the late 1980s to define memory card physical design, computer socket design, electrical interface, and associated software (referred to as the PCMCIA interface standard). Today PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) is an organization consisting of some 500 companies that has developed a standard for PC cards. Although originally designed for adding memory to portable computers, the PCMCIA standard has been expanded several times and is now suitable for many types of devices including modems, sound cards, floppy disk controllers, hard drives, Global Positioning System (GPS) cards, local area network (LAN) cards, pagers, and radiotelephone cards, among others.
There are three types of PC cards. All three types of cards have the same rectangular size (85.6 by 54 millimeters), but are different widths. Type I cards can be up to 3.3 mm thick, and are used primarily for adding additional ROM or RAM to a computer. Type II cards can be up to 5.5 mm thick. These cards are often used for modem and fax modem cards. Type III cards can be up to 10.5 mm thick, which is sufficiently large for portable disk drives. Likewise, PCMCIA slots in the receiving electronic devices also come in three sizes. A Type I slot can hold one Type I card. A Type II slot can hold one Type II card or one Type I card. A Type III slot can hold one Type III card or any combination of two Type I or II cards. An electronic interface which provides a female portion of a connector is provided on the PC card that mates with a male portion of the connector in the slot of the receiving device.
While a specific standard peripheral device, the PC card, has been described, it is to be understood that other peripheral devices or interface cards based on other standards or proprietary designs are known. These peripheral devices and interface cards are referred to herein inclusively as “cards”.
It will be understood that these cards may be manufactured by a manufacturing entity (hereinafter “manufacturer”) for sale to its customers where the customers, in turn, sell the cards at the retail level. Often the manufacturer will manufacture the same or similar cards for many different customers. Each customer typically requires that the manufacturer includes customer specific branding information such as logo, color scheme and trademark on each card. Because the manufacturer must comply with different branding requirements for different customers, the manufacturer has been required to maintain separate part numbers, drawings and inventory stock for the cards of each of its customers. The maintenance of separate card designs and inventories for each customer is expensive and inefficient and creates added overhead and supply chain complexity for the manufacturer. Moreover, manufacturing lead time is increased because customer-specific cards may not be manufactured until an order is received from that customer.
One attempt to address this issue is the use of stickers applied to the case of the card where the sticker contains some customer information. While the use of stickers addresses some of the manufacturer issues, the stickers are not considered acceptable by the customers because the stickers are not perceived to present the customer information in a permanent and high quality manner. Moreover, when the sticker is applied to the case of the card, it is not visible when the card is inserted in the electronic device thereby limiting the impact of the branding information.
Thus, an improved card construction that simplifies the manufacturing process is desired.